Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Nice!

I saw these photos (taken by someone named Nancy Stadler) of some test imagery from Disney's Rapunzel Unbraided project over at Jim Hill Media.




Unfortunately I missed Siggraph this year (and I am seriously bummer that I missed out on MC'ing the big CG-Char event again. I wanted the chance to do a repeat performance of whacking Raf Anzovin in the head with a Kit-Kat Bar at high velocity! I heard my buddy Justin Barrett did an admirable job this year instead). Anyhow, apparently this stuff was shown at a Siggraph Conference by Glen Keane. I don't have much to say about the article over at JHM, and I don't know jack diddly about the movie from a story standpoint. But I do know one thing: me likey pretty renders! Yeah, this stuff is CG.
Glen is highly respected by just about everybody, so you had to figure this Rapunzel stuff was gonna look good when we finally got a look see. But this? If I were offering an employee review of this I'd check off that box next to "Exceeds Expectations". Heh. Nice, indeed. Great use of volumetric light and paint stroke technology to get that soft painterly touch. Maybe a tad too much bloom in spots, but hey, it mixes in well. You see some more of that in that American Dog snippet that was also shown at Siggraph. Looks like Disney feature's mixing up a nice flavor of eyecandy, and I say great! The current standard tech/style for photo/hyper-real texture mapping of surfaces needs a good kick in the pants to get some fresh air flowing. Nice to see some imagery that plays with the edges some more as well as going more impressionistic with the details within the shapes of the mass.

Folks at work were ogling the A Day With Wilbur Robinson animation snippets, going ga-ga over the loose, elastic, very 2d styled motion. Yummy!

The artists and techies over at WDFA seem to be having fun and are making some really nice choices. Hopefully that rubs off on their bosses.
Hey, one can hope, right?

4 comments:

Jean-Denis Haas said...

The render and animation of the new Disney projects look amazing! I can't wait to see more!

But please no more pop culture reference overdose and songs-just-for-the-soundtrack...

Scott said...

I have to say, I was worried about Disney Feature animation and I still hate the suits closing the Florida studio...but I have to say this work looks impressive. Animation is so fluid and vibrant.

If the storys & movies are good, Pixar might have to run for their money afterall.

Anonymous said...

If the animation (and the story pleeeaase!!) turns out to be as amazing as these stills then Disney could regain some of their lost fans and truly compete with Pixar and Dreamworks in their own turf...

Vive la différence!!

Kimotion said...

Wow...those stills look like oil paintings! It just looks beautiful.